NORTHERN UGANDA
Milen Kidane, a 33-year-old Eritrean protection officer
with UNICEF, held my arm firmly as we entered the
Rachele Centre, a large walled compound with half a
dozen dormitories in Lira, a bustling market
town in northern Uganda. Kidane, an effusive
woman with a warm smile, helps care for some
of the score of children who come to the center
every month, all former abductees of the Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA), rebels in northern
Uganda fighting to overthrow the Ugandan gov
ernment in the name of strict Christian rule. For
the past 19 years, LRA guerrillas have sneaked
into villages at night, killed or mutilated people
at random, and kidnapped children to serve as
slaves and fighters. Some of the children are
forced to kill their friends or families.
Humanitarian workers like Kidane, working
behind the scenes in conflicts mostly ignored by
the rest of the world, represent, quite simply,
hope in hell. Kidane has provided that hope for
wounded and traumatized children escaped
from or released by rebels. Some 2,400 of them
have passed through the Rachele Centre since it
was opened in 2003 by Belgian journalist Els
de Temmerman.
Funded by both the government and indi
vidual sponsors in Belgium, the center provides
psychological support and medical treatment to
the young victims, preparing them to return to
their families in IDP (internally displaced per
sons) camps or villages to pick up the pieces
of their lives. Those whose parents are dead go,
also with funding from Belgian sponsors and
local NGOs, to boarding schools or vocational
training centers.
In a whitewashed schoolroom, Kidane and
I nodded a polite greeting to small clusters of
children who sat at wooden tables drawing pic
tures. Some showed memories of former lives
-houses and families. Others showed match
stick figures with dreadlocks hacking at men,
women, and children with machetes, shooting
them with guns, or attacking government sol
diets. The drawings of helicopters, armored vehi
cles, and trucks were astonishingly realistic.
42 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC * DECEMBER 2005
"Most of these children have spent four or
five years in captivity and have witnessed all sorts
of atrocities," said Kidane. "But they have sur
vived. The majority stay here for five or six weeks
before returning to their families."
Kidane explains how the Ugandan govern
ment helps the rehabilitated children broadcast
on local radio stations to the bush rebels,
appealing to their former commanders to sur
render as part of a government amnesty pro
gram. "They also hope to let friends who are still
captives know that they're alive."
As I explored the compound, I came across
Dick O. (last names are not revealed here), a 12
year-old boy with a cast on his leg from a gun
shot injury. He had a dozen or so bayonet
wounds, almost healed, in his chest. Dick told
me a tale typical of the thousands of young
Ugandans robbed of childhood by the LRA.
He remembered the night he was kidnapped
by the rebels. "I could hear them come into the
village. There was a lot of shouting. They came
to our hut and pointed guns at us. We were very
scared." The men forced him and six other boys,
including his brother, to loot the trading post.
"We put everything on our backs. They beat us
and pushed us into the bush. Then we had
to walk."
Once in the bush, the boys were distributed
as personal slaves or soldiers to the commanders.
As for the captured girls, they were offered to
individual rebels as soldiers, sex slaves, or wives.
Those who would not obey, or who cried, were
beaten; some were killed.
Dick received basic military training and was
often forced to watch civilians being tortured
and murdered. Sometimes he and the other boys
had to stab or bludgeon people to death; other
wise they, too, would be killed. "Then we had to
drink their blood," he said, fidgeting with his
fingers. "They made us drink so that we became
part of the dead people. This way we all killed."